Graham Norton earned €117k for every episode of chat show in 2019

Graham Norton’s pay for So Television represents good value for the ITV-owned company as it became even more reliant in 2019 on Norton’s prime time show to generate its revenues

Chat show king Graham Norton received pay of €3.74m for presenting his popular Friday night BBC chat show in 2019, according to newly filed accounts.

The £3.235m (€3.74m) that Norton received from production company, So Television Ltd is in addition to the £725,000 that the BBC paid the popular entertainer in 2019/20 for presenting his BBC Radio 2 show.

The combined £3.96m (€4.58m) pay received by Norton for his TV and radio work in 2019 puts the Corkman in a pay league of his own among Irish broadcasters.

The €4.58m pay for 2019 is €1.37m more than the combined €3.21m pay that the top 10 earners at RTÉ that includes Ryan Tubridy and Joe Duffy received in 2019.

Norton’s pay for So Television represents good value for the ITV-owned company as it became even more reliant in 2019 on Norton’s prime time show to generate its revenues.

In 2019, So Television Ltd generated pre-tax profits of £2.3m as revenues declined by 9 per cent from £15.89m to £14.43m.

The company generates the bulk of its revenues from the Graham Norton Show broadcast on BBC and countries around the world.

The £3.23m pay in 2019 — made up of presenter fees, production fees and royalties — was an increase of £262,755 on the £2.97m paid to Norton by So Television in 2018.

The 2019 figure represents pay of £101,105 (€117,102) per show or £2,246 (€2,601) per minute from the 31 Graham Norton Shows and one Graham Norton Good Guest Guide broadcast during 2019.

The directors’ report states that the Graham Norton Show “continued to perform very well in sales and ratings, both in the UK and internationally”.

The directors state that sales decreased due to the reduced number of Blind Date episodes and Chuckletime not returning.

A breakdown of So Television’s revenues show that £10.5m was generated in the UK with £3.86m generated in ‘rest of world’.

Last December, Norton left BBC Radio 2 after 10 years and now presents Saturday and Sunday morning shows on Virgin Radio UK.

In an interview earlier this year, he hit out at the publication of the BBC top earners' list. He said:

The list is rubbish. It doesn’t mean anything.

"It doesn’t tell you what people are earning because of how people are paid, which is why so many radio people are on that list."

In a previous interview, 58-year-old Norton said: “You cannot justify my wages, so I don’t try. Am I still cashing the cheques? Yes, because somehow the market forces have decreed this is my value.”

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